


Wander On Our Winding Way

by recoveringrabbit



Series: all great words [5]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Fluff without Plot, Future Fic, Road Trip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-17
Updated: 2016-11-17
Packaged: 2018-08-31 12:38:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8578846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/recoveringrabbit/pseuds/recoveringrabbit
Summary: In which FitzSimmons, and their son, dawdle through country lanes.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is so old, you guys—like, I literally wrote it before the Pod. I only needed to change a few words, though, which just goes to show you that Jemma Simmons and I are simpatico because we have both always wanted FitzSimmons to end up together in a cottage in the country somewhere.

They leave early, before the sun is up.

There had been discussion about an early departure ruining the delicate triumph that was Archie sleeping through the night but she, intimately familiar with her son’s sleep patterns as well as his father’s, was confident it wouldn’t make a difference. She wasn’t wrong. He was asleep again before they left the lane. Fitz, not a morning person, made it a bit further but shortly drifted off as well, leaving her to drive in silence through the dark night. Let them sleep, she thinks. Goodness knows none of them have got enough of that lately. Then she settles down to a tricky mental exercise in chemistry to keep herself occupied as the sun rises slowly on her left. The rays, reaching their rosy fingers across the seats, turn both her sleeping boys’ curls to gold.

He stirs awake with uncanny timing, just as she reaches the end of the exercise and is beginning to feel the early morning catch up with her. “My turn?” he asks, blinking owlishly.

“Near about.” A yawn splits her face, and they both smile. From the back seat, soft burbles float up, turning quickly to more insistent demands. “I’ll just feed him, and then I’ll sleep.”

She pulls off to make the transfer, crawling into the backseat next to the baby while he takes the wheel. Archie sucks down the bottle greedily, milk running into the crevices of his neck and chin. She makes a silly face at him. “You’re going to become a perfect circle at this rate, young sir.”

Fitz looks back at them in the mirror. “Don’t listen to her. Hefting you around is the only exercise either of us gets anymore.”

Turning her funny face to her husband, she removes the empty bottle and dabs the spit cloth at the worst places. “Of course, it doesn’t matter what you look like. Mummy loves you anyway.” For that, she is rewarded with a two-toothed smile, his tiny chin jutting out as he grins at her, reaching chubby hands up to grasp her hair. Until Fitz laughs, she doesn’t realise she’s making the ridiculous baby noises she had hated so before. She couldn’t help it. He is a wonder, this boy. Six months old and she hasn’t got used to him: this amazing, beautiful, _alive_ thing she and Fitz had made from their hearts, not their brains. “How could we have ever called the DWARFs our babies?” she asks, not for the first time, and he responds as he always does: “How could we know any different?”

When she awakes, the sun is high in the sky and Fitz is carefully explaining the efficacy of various electrical conductors while Archie plays with his feet. “If we could only figure out a way,” he is saying, “to combine the weight of calcium with the stability of copper, it would solve a lot of problems.” She smiles, recognising the problem at the heart of their latest project, and gingerly rubs at the kink in her neck as she leans forward to catch sight of the dashboard clock. They are making very good time. She is glad they chose to drive rather than take the train down. Archie is more comfortable, for one, and it is nice, the three of them hurtling through space in this small metal capsule as if no one else exists. She doesn’t wish that, not really, but sometimes she thinks she could live happily if it were true. As she settles back into her seat, she squeezes Fitz’s arm affectionately.

“Oh good,” he says, “I had an idea about the cycle problem in the scanner. Tell me if you think this will work.”

Even after all these years she has a hard time conceptualizing his projects without looking at them, so it takes him until they are pulling off the motorway for lunch to talk it through to his own satisfaction. That accomplished, he trolls down the main street of the town, peering out the windows at the shops on either side. “Fast or slow?”

“I think young master would appreciate another position.” She shifts and hears something pop in her back. “As would I.”

They eat in a slightly dodgy chippie that has two tables crammed into the corner, both of which they require for all the paraphernalia they now have to tote around. “It’s probably cleaner than the floor,” she says dubiously, juggling Archie on one hip so she can dig for the anti-bacterial wipes in the bag Fitz has slung over his shoulder. He takes a travel-sized packet from his pocket—of course he does—and wipes off the tables so he can set the things down. Then he holds out his hands invitingly, catching the baby as he lunges from her arms into his father’s. “I suppose you think you’re getting fed first?” he asks, bouncing Archie up and down. “You’re wrong. Of the three of us, you’re the only one that’s had breakfast.”

It is a fair plan, but their son can be a bit of a tyrant; he refuses to wait his turn, reaching for the chips and trying to gnaw them to bits only to scream when he finds them too hot. In the end, it works out that Fitz holds baby with one arm and eats with the other, while she switches back and forth between her own meal and spooning the disgusting mush Archie gets into his demanding mouth. He doesn’t even finish the jar before his eyes drift shut, slowly but surely, and his whole little body relaxes into the warm nest of Da. Sleeping, he looks like a brooding bird. “About time,” Fitz whispers. “Does this mean you can sit up front again?”

“If he stays asleep,” she says just as quietly, hoping it’s the case, “I’ve brought the latest conference proceedings.”

His face lights up. “From Switzerland?”

“And Munich.”

“What did I do to deserve you?” he asks lightly, but his eyes aren’t joking. Careful not to disturb the baby, she leans across the space between them and kisses the corner between his mouth and his cheek.

After lunch and refueling, they decide to leave the motorway. It’s a beautiful day, the baby is sleeping, they have two conferences worth of papers to catch up on, and they are on holiday together—neither of them feels a desire to rush things along. He directs the car to the maze of country roads, flicks on the GPS, and lets the car dawdle along in 2nd gear so he can hold her hand as she reads aloud. The only things to interrupt are discussions on the discoveries and a herd of cows in the road. It is peaceful, idyllic even; the outward circumstances perfectly reflect how she inwardly feels all the time these days.

Then there is a horrible grinding from under the bonnet, followed by two thumps and a sputter as the car wheezes to a stop. Then silence. They look at each other for half a second before he says “Hell!” and blasts out of the car, leaving the keys swinging in the ignition. She leans across the seat and turns the car off, then pops open the boot so he can get at his tool chest. Thank goodness he refuses to travel without it. “What did it sound like?” she asks as he passes the window, x-ray scope already in hand, and receives an incredulous shrug in response. “But the whole thing’s smoking,” he adds. “Never a good sign.”

She would get out and look herself, but at that very moment Archie wakes up crying, missing the motion of the car and irritated by the mess in his nappy. That seems more pressing than whatever is happening outside – nothing good, to judge by the noises Fitz is making. Remedying her share of the problems takes quite a bit of time, but at least at the end Archie is smiling contentedly. In contrast, her husband’s mutterings have only grown increasingly frustrated has he clanks away. It’s beginning to sound serious.

With a freshly fed, changed, and washed baby on her hip, she comes round the front of the car to find its engine spread all over the verge and a very cross Fitz up to his elbows in the bonnet, peering at the display screen for the scope. “It’s not the valves or the spark plugs or the belts and I’ve pretty much ruled out the pistons and the crankshaft. If it’s the synchronizer or the gears I’m going to have to take apart the whole bloody thing to fix it.”

“Fitz!” She frowns and jiggles the baby. “Language.”

“Oh, for the love of—” At her glare, her checks himself and bends over to meet Archie’s eyes. “Sorry, little man. Mummy doesn’t think this counts as extreme provocation.”

The baby stares back solemnly, fascinated by the black streaks on his daddy’s face. She takes in the pieces on the grass around them and glances up worriedly at the sun. “Will you be able to fix it—?” she starts, but is interrupted by his affronted huff. One hand on his hip, he appeals to Archie. “Mummy doubts my ability to fix the engine. If a man can’t count on his wife—”

“Honestly.” She rolls her eyes. “Mummy knows Daddy can fix the engine because Daddy is one of the best engineers of the century. Mummy does doubt that Daddy can fix it and put it all back in a timely manner, because she thinks he’s forgotten that our food supplies do not extend to dinner and that we didn’t bring a torch.”

He opens his mouth to retort, but thinks the better of it and looks in his toolbox first. “How embarrassing,” he says finally.

As he begins the long process of putting the pieces back together, she spreads out a picnic rug they keep in the car and plops Archie down between her legs to practice sitting up while she makes the necessary calls. Thankfully, the phones are in service. It takes her a bit to pin down where, exactly, they are, and another to locate the nearest garage, but once she does they promise they’ll be out as soon as they can. Which may be an hour or more. Sighing, she dials her parents and informs them that they’ve had car trouble and will be late, if they arrive this evening at all. He bellows messages that she does not relay.

Then she sets Archie beside her, careful to keep him in the circle of her arm, and lies back on the blanket to look at the sky. Considering there was a time in her life when she lived on a plane, she still thinks there is nothing to quite touch the blue of the English sky on a summer day. “At least it isn’t raining,” she says aloud.

“Don’t jinx it!” He slams the bonnet shut, then the boot, and throws himself face downward onto the blanket next to her, propping himself up on his elbows. “I’m pretty sure it’s the synchronizer. I may not have accurately estimated the wear that ramping up the rotations would place on it.”

“I did warn you,” she says dreamily, closing her eyes and turning her face to the sun. What is a synchronizer in the grand scheme of this day? “But you got the box out?”

“Of course I got the box out. The last thing we need is to explain how that bit of tech works.”

She makes no response and he settles into silence, plucking a blade of grass and trying, as he always does, to turn it into a whistle. Someday, she thinks, he’s going to succeed, and then what will he do with himself on picnics? He casts it away and sighs. “Is there really nothing to eat?”

“Fitz, really.”

He gets to his knees, already moving. “Where? In your purse?”

“Don’t get your hopes too high,” she responds, pushing herself up to rest on her elbows. “It’s just a Battenburg.”

“More than enough,” he says, returning with the cake and a gleeful expression. “Can Archie have Battenburg, you think?”

“Not the marzipan.”

“Never the marzipan.”

He opens the wrapper and pulls the marzipan off the first piece, popping it into her mouth as a matter of course. Archie is given one of the pink squares, which he stares at speculatively before mashing between his hands and licking it off his fingers. Watching him, she and Fitz laugh affectionately as they polish off half the cake in hardly any time at all. “Perfect,” he says, lying back on the rug. “How do you always know the right snack?”

“It’s a gift.”

“How did I get so lucky?” he says again, this time completely in fun. But it hits her this time as it did not before: here they are on the grass on a beautiful day, eating cake, well and whole with their son between them. There are so many times that it so easily could have gone the other way. How _did_ they get so lucky, to find each other and come back to each other over and over again and somehow end happily, despite everything that had happened to them?

“Hey,” he says, rolling over and putting his hand on hers. “Stop trying to quantify it. You’ll just make yourself mental.”

He is right, of course. (How he knows what she’s thinking, she stopped asking a long time ago.) There is no way to know—if there were, it wouldn’t be luck. She turns her hand over to clasp his. “I love you.”

“I love you too.” He gives her hand a quick squeeze and lets go to scoop up Archie, holding him over his head in the air. “And I love you, you lump. Don’t spit up the cake on me, please.” Archie gurgles happily and drools as his father zooms him around like a superhero—Iron Man, of course, the engineer—and she lies back down to watch him. They stay like that until the tow truck comes.


End file.
